Question Corner #5 – 3/18/2016

I feel I must apologize for the lateness of this entry. Not because I didn’t do it, because this has been ready for weeks now, but for some reason, it just kinda slipped my mind that I hadn’t put this up yet. It’s like going out of your way to make a really good pasta for dinner, but then just forgetting that you made it and you accidentally put a pizza in the oven instead. Entry #6, which might be ready soon, should be up sooner than this one because of this random delay.

Before we get started, as usual….if you would like to submit a questions of your own, go to the Contact page and send me a question for the Question Corner. Questions only focusing on “What LP will I do?” or “When will you LP this game?” will not be answered, so do not make a habit of asking those questions. And of course, please leave out questions that I’ve answered before and anything personal that doesn’t really belong on this website. Thank you!

Q: “What was your childhood dream job?”A: Honestly, just making a job out of video games in some fashion would have been satisfying for my younger self. Whether it was making them, playtesting them, or even what I’m doing know with making videos on Youtube; anything that would put me in the field would have been just dandy.

Q: “What is your least favorite Let’s Play that you have done?”A: Aside from the really bad camcorder projects of the old days, probably my blind run of Kirby’s Dream Land 3. Mario Party 3 is also pretty bad, but that KDL3 playthrough was just…ugh! I just get a bad feeling from even thinking about that one. Just the fact that it was a blind run, with post commentary just made it seem like it was very unprofessionally done. I’m glad I went back to redo that project at a later date and time, because the redone project was a lot better. Still wasn’t super crazy about the game, but I would have much rather had that new playthrough than the old one.

Q: ”What would you do if you won the lottery?”A: First I would pay off ALL of my student loans so I would never have to worry about those ever again. Then, honestly, I would just save a lot of the money just in case I would ever need it for a rainy day. You never know when it could come in handy.

Q: “What did you think of Futurama being cancelled again?”A: Honestly, I don’t have much of a problem with it this time. This time they were able to end it with a proper finale, they got two pretty good quality seasons out of it being on Comedy Central, and I feel like it has met its goal this time. I’m personally someone who doesn’t mind the newer seasons of The Simpsons, but I do agree that the quality is much lower than what it used to be, and I think if Futurama tried to squeeze a few more seasons out, it would have started going down the same path.

Q: “What is your opinion on Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts?”A: I’ve personally never played it, so I can’t give you an actual opinion of the game, but based on what I have seen of it, it’s disappointing because it doesn’t really deliver on what made Banjo such a great series (at that point). Whether the actual game itself is good or not, it’s not what many faithful BK followers bought an Xbox for, and it wasn’t really what Microsoft was paying for when they initially bought Rare. Think of it this way…you bought a steak, but instead were given a salad. Maybe the salad is really good, but it’s not what you paid for. That’s what many people seem to have an issue with in regards to Nuts & Bolts. Given, a part of that might be on the consumers and not Rare, because it was pretty clear that Nuts and Bolts was not going to be that new Banjo game everyone wanted, but I feel like the development was not necessarily denying that false identity either. Or rather, they didn’t do enough.

Q: “How far are you from getting a 3DS Capture Card and where can I donate to the cause?”A: I’m still a few hundred away, but I’ve collected a lot of really great donations from the Star Warrior community so far! If you would like to donate, here is a link to my donation page!

Q: “Have you considered getting into the Mario Party development team?”A: If it were that easy, then yes, I would totally get on board and make changes and get that series back on the right track. I really don’t see how NDCube continues to screw up on these games because the Mario Party fanbase has been quite vocal about what they want and what they don’t want. Mairo Party 10 was a huge oversight on their part and they could have made an excellent game if they actually did their research.

Q: “On a scale of 1-10, how cute is Kirby?”A: Kirby gets a freaking 10, no questions asked!

Q: “For your best of/worst of Mario Party series, did you get the ideas for the skits from the games themselves?”A: Pretty much, at least for Mario Party 5 and onward. I didn’t really have any themes in mind for MP1-MP4. I was just winging it for Mario Party 1, and my skits for Mario Party 2 were based on the viewer response from the skits in the first set of videos. Mario Party 3 was just an experiment I wanted to try on having a guest on board. Mario Party 4 was kind of relevant since there was the mini-mushroom and everything, but really I just didn’t want to spend much time on the skits that time. Everything else tried to feature something from the games I was covering, like the dreams of MP5, the night/day of MP6, the vacation of MP7, the candy of MP8 and driving around in a car for MP9.

Q: “What is your favorite food?”A: I am a sucker for Italian food, whether it’s pizza or pasta (which explains the pasta scenario I made at the beginning of this post). I am also a big fan of seafood too. There’s an amazing seafood restaurant in my area that we go to for my birthday every year and I look forward to that day every year because of that. Those are definitely my favorites though.

Q: “What are your thoughts on the passing of David Bowie?”A: Truly heartbreaking! David Bowie is one of my all-time favorite musicians and musical artists and his death hit me pretty hard. I used to listen to his music for hours during my teenage years and it got me through some pretty tough times.

Q: “Do you plan to use face-cam on any of your videos?”A: If it’s a project/game that would be enhanced by the usage of a face cam, like Slender, Five Nights At Freddys, or many of the other reactionary horror games out there, I’ll consider the idea, but it’s more than likely going to be a straight “No!” I don’t really think facecam adds anything to a Let’s Play and those who “think” it does, only think that way because multi-channel networks tell them that it does, or just think “Well, pewdiepie does it,” so it’s automatically a successful idea that needs to be incorporated (which is also something MCNs will tell you). I mean, I suppose it could add a bit of a personal touch to some videos, but they are mostly used successfully when it’s a game like Amnesia (the horror game, not the dating sim) or Outlast, where Pewdiepie is screaming his head off and the viewers have a visual aid to laugh alongside with. That’s the only time it really works, in my opinion.

Q: “Have you considered stopping Youtube altogether?”A: In terms of just randomly thinking “You know what, I don’t want to do this anymore,” no, I have never really considered it. However, in terms of thinking “Well, there might come a day where I will need to put this aside for more important things,” yeah, I wonder about that all the time. Hell, there are recent days where I have to start thinking about that stuff. As far as what I’m doing about it, I’m just taking it one day at a time and if I need to stop, I will. However, it’s going to be really hard to get me to stop completely. I’m sure I’ll find a way back to this somehow.

Q: “What are your thoughts on the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games?”A: I think the games are really good in their own right. I would rather play the handheld adventure games because that is where the series shines most, but the MD games are very interesting spinoff titles. I’ve never been able to completely get through a Mystery Dungeon game, but I think it’s because I always approach the games in the worst way possible. Like for RetroAchievements where I expect that I need to do every single sidequest and optional mission in order to get everything. I should honestly just play through the games.

Q: “What kind of movies do you like to watch?”A: I’m not a very big movie guy, but only in terms of going out to see them. These days I often have a lot more fun watching movies with friends on Netflix, or having a group movie night with my Skype friends. I can watch or pretty much get into anything as long as it’s not super long or boring to the point where I get distracted by the piece of dust in the corner of the room. Some of my favorite movies though are classic movies like Forrest Gump and The Right Stuff, but I’ve gotten into a number of movies very easily. I am also a fan of classic Adam Sandler movies like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison.

Q: What kind of books do you like to read?”A: Someone was really, really driven on getting the very basic and broad questions out of the way because I think he asked the previous question too. Anyway, I’m not really that much of a reader. I think it’s because I get distracted really easily and sometimes if I’m not feeling it, I start slurring words together in my head to get through the page/chapter faster. Recently I read through the Hunger Games trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I only got interested after watching the first movie. I think my favorite book though is “The Three Kingdoms” by Luo Guanzong, which is a novelization of the “Three Kingdoms” saga, which is the same saga the Dynasty Warriors games are based off of as well, so I had a lot of fun reading through that because I had some prior knowledge through the games. That’s all I can really say about books though.

Q: “What was your college experience like?”A: My college experience was…decent. I wouldn’t say it was a great experience because I kind of felt like the things I did learn were great tools for the real world and I learned a lot about myself as well. However, the things I did go to college for, and by extension, the things I paid thousands and thousands of dollars for, really weren’t that worth it for me. I don’t feel like my professors (most of them anyway) were really that great and a lot of things I did learn were things I had to self-teach myself and it’s debatable if I even left the institution with all the knowledge I did need (at least in relation to what I was studying). Some of the best things I learned were “how to keep a solid budget,” “how to properly schedule your tasks,” “how to keep your living space in order,” “how to deal with (bad) roommates,” and let’s face it, I did all of that stuff while also balancing a Youtube channel that was starting to become moderately successful during those times. Those are all good things, but not things I went to college for. So at the end of the day, college ended up feeling like a fifty-thousand dollar expense that I will never get back and I’ll be paying that expense for the next 10 or 20 years. Not to mention that I don’t really feel that prepared for the real world either. Maybe I just had a bad major choice for my particular institution (I went to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana), so I’m not going to say college is not good, because there is definitely some value to it. It’s just not worth the thousands and thousands of dollars you have to pay for it, especially considering that college isn’t for everyone.

Q: “Have there been games that you didn’t like as much, but after Let’s Playing them, you liked more? And the reverse?”A: I’m glad I got this question during the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze playthrough because that game is slowly becoming the perfect model for your question. I was not really into the game that much during my first playthrough, but now, after playing through about 60% of the game for the LP project, I’m finding that I’m enjoying it a whole lot more and it’s slowly becoming one of my favorite Wii U games as a result. Mario Party 7 was another game that I wasn’t too crazy about either, but I liked it a lot more after the LP as well. As for games I found I didn’t like as much after finishing….it’s hard to say. I don’t feel like there have been any games I’ve just not liked anymore after LPing them. Super Mario Sunshine was kind of demoralizing, but that was moreso because I went through the game 100% three times in a span of like 2 or 3 months, not really because of the game or project itself. Mario Party 10 was also a disappointment, but I was already kind of not digging that game anyway.

Q: “Should Masahiro Sakurai be replaced as the main developer of Smash Bros?”A: No, definitely not. I don’t like some of his decisions, and I think he needs to stop giving ‘so much’ special treatment to his own series, but like it or not, he is a good developer. I just think he needs a little direction in some cases. But as far as being the main developer, I don’t think that should be taken away from him and he doesn’t deserve to be “Kojima’d” for lack of a better term.

Well, that’s it for another Question Corner! Thanks to everyone for the questions and I will see you guys next time!